


Unspoken

by somebodyslight



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Double Drabble, Flowers, Gen, Language of Flowers, M/M, Shinigami Scribblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 06:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somebodyslight/pseuds/somebodyslight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flowers speak louder than words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unspoken

At first, Eric had found them odd, the daily little gifts Alan left on his desk after his first reap of the morning - always a single blossom with a small note in Alan’s perfectly-formed script indicating what it was.

For Christmas, he received a book on the language of flowers, a sprig of holly pressed in its cover.

He spent the rest of the night digging through a box of little scraps of paper and learning all the things Alan had tried to tell him, and he learned that Alan had said more through flowers than he had with words.

 

He kept the book in his desk, its pages dog-eared and marked, and it became a game when Alan returned from a collection, an oak-leaved geranium in hand, to find a moss rosebud at his.

When Alan began to miss work, he was welcomed back with zinnias, but Eric didn’t expect zephyr flower in response. Balm of Gilead was met with milkvetch. Iceland moss with convulvulus major.

Alan never explained his absences, never appeared outwardly unwell, never suggested that anything at all was wrong, but people not scheduled for judgement started dying when Eric learned the meaning of black mulberry.

**Author's Note:**

> Meanings taken from Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers, which can be found in full here: http://archive.org/stream/languageofflower00gree#page/n7/mode/2up
> 
> Holly: Foresight (holly herb means enchantment)  
> Oak-leaved geranium: True friendship  
> Moss rosebud: Confession of love  
> Zinnia: Thoughts of absent friends  
> Zephyr flower: Sickness  
> Balm of Gilead: Cure, relief  
> Milkvetch: Your presence softens my pains  
> Iceland moss: Health  
> Convulvulus major: Extinguished hopes  
> Black mulberry: I shall not survive you


End file.
